The program for our 2018 conference has now been released on our social medias and conference page! It features two academic keynote speakers (Wendy Roy and Pamela Sing) and two keynote creative writers (Zarqa Nawaz and Audrée Wilhelmy). We will have joint panels with other associations, notably a Graduate Student Reading and a Round Table.

Thank you to all of you for submitting your proposals to create what will be a thought-provoking conference where we will gather to discuss indigenous literature, the works of major women writers, contemporary poetry, the questions that emerging writers are tackling, as well as the role of the secular and the sacred in Canadian writing, the issues that surround (re)-imagining the past, the possibilities that exist for creative criticism, and much more. We invite you to enjoy the Big Thinking Lecture Series events. Our annual conference is also the moment where we award the Gabrielle Roy prize for the best academic book, and the Barbara Godard prize for the best student paper.

My warmest thanks go to our vice-presidents Shelley Hulan (English) and Scott Powers (French) for their incredible work in assembling this stimulating program. I also would like to extend my thanks to our local coordinators Medrie Purdham and Mark Lajoie who, among many other duties, are in charge of organizing our banquet at the Fireside Bistro. The enhanced and definitive version of the program will be released in April.

A friendly reminder to our regular attendees, and important info for new members: in order to be formally accepted to the Congress, you need to register:

Zarqa Nawaz, creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie (CBC Television 2007-2012) and bestselling author, will be one of the Keynote Speakers featured in the 2018 ACQL Conference Program.

How to write a sitcom about Muslims – very carefully!

As debates rage about changing culture and religious accommodations in various communities, Zarqa Nawaz talks about what it was like creating the first comedy about a western based Muslim society in Canada and the challenges that ensued.

About Zarqa Nawaz

Zarqa Nawaz has a B.Sc from the University of Toronto and after being rejected from medical school she went on to create several short comedy films that focused on Muslim issues in Canada. When the National Film Board of Canada approached her to do something more serious, she was ready for it. Her 2005 ground-breaking documentary Me and the Mosque explored Muslim women’s battle with patriarchy in the mosque. Her comedy hit, Little Mosque on the Prairie, ran on CBC Television between 2007 and 2012. Most recently she has written a bestselling, Leacock-nominated comedic memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, in which she explores what it was like to grow up as a Canadian of Muslim faith.

Pamela V. Sing, professor of Québécois and French-Canadian minorities’ literatures at Campus St-Jean, the University of Alberta’s French campus, will be one of the Keynote Speakers featured in the 2018 ACQL Conference Program.

Wendy Roy, professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Saskatchewan, will be one of the Keynote Speakers featured in the 2018 ACQL Conference Program.

Women of the Apocalypse: Writing the End of the World in Canada

Dystopian and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction is a commentary on the present. It asks readers to consider environmental, technological, and political events, developments, and policies in the world today, and the impact that these might have on the world of the future. Apocalyptic fiction by Canadian women writers often connects these discussions with other important topics, including the nature of understanding and of expressing humanity through the spoken and written word. Much of the current analysis of literary examples of such fiction in Canada has focused on the writings of Margaret Atwood, and while these are essential, other Canadians have made significant contributions to this body of speculative fiction, including Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring), Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven), Margaret Laurence (“A Queen in Thebes” ), P.K. Page (“Unless the Eye Catch Fire”), Carol Shields (“Words”), and Lee Maracle (“The Void”). This talk will consider how such novels and short stories interrogate the way that, rather than writing about interstellar travel or alien life forms, literary speculative fiction by diverse women in Canada instead explores the importance of language to being human or questions whether the end of humanity could in fact be full of beauty and increased communication and understanding.

About Wendy Roy

Dr. Wendy Roy is professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Saskatchewan. Her current research project is on dystopian and apocalyptic fiction by Canadian women writers. She has published essays on Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, and Margaret Laurence, as well as Maps of Difference: Canada, Women, and Travel and the coedited Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual. Her study The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche is currently in publication review. Wendy is past-president of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures / l’Association des littératures canadiennes et québécoises.

I am delighted to introduce the calls for papers for the 2018 ACQL Conference. For this conference, the Association makes two calls for papers, one a general call and another a call for submissions to member-organized sessions.

ACQL’s annual conference will take place at the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan from May 26-28, 2018.

Featuring English- and French-language plenaries and panels, the 2018 conference adapts the theme of Congress 2018, “Gathering Diversities,” to the Association’s commitment to language as a living archive of culture and politics. In Regina, home of longstanding Fransaskois, Métis, and anglophone communities, we will bring junior and established scholars together to consider the roles that literature plays in expressing Canadians’ relations to their many languages here and around the world.

I am delighted to be beginning a 2-year term as President of our association. I would like to extend my deep gratitude towards Sara Jamieson, Outgoing President, who leaves the Association in excellent standing.

I’m very lucky to be able to count on a promising executive council which includes members who have been involved for a long time. A number of these members are continuing in their roles: Steven Urquhart as Treasurer and Jimmy Thibeault as Chair of the Gabrielle Roy prize – French section; Andrea Cabajasky is now the Chair of the Gabrielle Roy prize – English section. We also welcome new members to the council: Shelley Hulan and Scott Powers, Vice-Presidents (Anglophone and Francophone, respectively) as well as Medrie Purdham who joins us as Local Coordinator to help with organizing the 2018 conference at the University of Regina. Misao Dean and Sylvie Bérard have already taken charge of our Facebook page to keep you up to date.

The entire team will work hard this year to prepare a stimulating annual conference which will allow us the opportunity to gather together and share our research. In order to help us achieve this goal, we ask for your active participation: please respond to the call for papers by sending proposals for member-organized panels and paper proposals. Furthermore, don’t hesitate to send me any relevant announcements (conferences, calls for papers, available positions etc.) so that I may pass them on to our mailing list.

Now that we have a functioning website (thanks Sara!), we will work to make it more interactive and comprehensive over the next few weeks.

The Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2016 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English section), which each year honours the best book of Canadian literary criticism written in English, is Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives, edited by Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley (Wilfrid Laurier University Press). The winner was chosen by a jury composed of Misao Dean (University of Victoria), Shelley Hulan (University of Waterloo), and Christl Verduyn (Mount Allison University). The prize was awarded at a reception held by the Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures, on the evening of May 27th in Toronto.